"Three hundred and seventy kilometres?" Liane Delorme held this
equivalent of two-hundred and thirty English miles in supreme contempt.
"We shall make it in eight hours. We leave at four at latest, possibly
earlier; at midnight we are in Cherbourg. You shall see."
"If I survive..."
"Have no fear. My chauffeur drives superbly."
She was at the door when Lanyard stayed her with "One moment, Liane!"
With fingers resting lightly on the knob she turned.
"Speak English," he requested briefly. "What about Dupont?"
Simple mention of the man was enough to make the woman wince and lose
colour. Before she replied Lanyard saw the tip of her tongue furtively
moisten her lips.
"Well, and what of him?"
"Do you imagine he has had enough?"
"Who knows? I for one shall feel safe from him only when I knew he is
in the Santé or his grave."
"Suppose he tries to follow us to Cherbourg or to stop us on the
way..."
"How should he know?"
"Tell me who left the doors open for him last night, and I will answer
that question." The woman looked more than ever frightened, but shook
her head. "You didn't fail to question the servants this morning, yet
learned nothing?"
"It was impossible to fix the blame..."
"Have you used all your intelligence, I wonder?"
"What do you mean?"
"Have you reflected that, since Dupont got in after you came home, his
accomplice in your household is most probably one of those who were up
at that hour. Who were they?"
"Only two. The footman, Leon..."
"You trust him?"
"Not altogether. Now you make me think, I shall discharge him when I
leave, without notice."
"Wait. Who else?"
"Marthe, my maid."
"You have confidence in her loyalty?"
"Implicit. She has been with me for years."
Lanyard said "Open that door!" in a tone sharp with such authority that
Liane Delorme instinctively obeyed, and the woman whom Lanyard had seen
that morning coming down the stairs with the lighted candle entered
rather precipitately, carrying over one arm an evening wrap of gold
brocade and fur.
"Pardon, madame," she murmured, and paused. Aside from the awkwardness
of her entrance, she betrayed no confusion. "I was about to knock and
ask if madame wished me to pack this..."
"You know very well I shall need it," Liane said ominously. A look from
Lanyard checked a tirade, or more exactly compressed it into a single
word: "Imbécile!"
"Yes, madame."
Marthe hinted at rather than executed a courtesy and withdrew. Liane
shut the door behind her, and reapproached the bed, trembling with an
anger that rendered her forgetful, so that she relapsed into French.
"You think she was listening?"
"English, please!" To this Lanyard added a slight shrug..
"It is hard to believe," Liane averred unhappily. "After all these
years... I have been kind to that one, too!"
"Ah, well! At least you know now she will bear watching. You mean to
take her with you?"
"I did, until this happened. We quarrelled about it, last night. I
think she has a lover here in Paris and doesn't want to leave him."
"And now will you tell me that Dupont knows nothing of your intention
to motor to Cherbourg today?"
"No..." Disconsolate, Liane sank down into the chair and, resting an
elbow on the arm, clipped her chin in one hand. "Now I dare not go,"
she mused aloud. "Yet I must!... What am I to do?"
"Courage, little sister! It is I who have an idea." Liane lifted a gaze
of mute enquiry. "I think we are now agreed it rests between Marthe and
the footman Leon, this treachery." She assented. "Very well. Then let
them run the risks any further disloyalty may have prepared for us."
"I do not understand..."
"What automobile are you using for our trip this afternoon?"
"My limousine for you and me."
"And Marthe: how is she to make the journey?"
"In the touring car, which follows us with our luggage."
"It is fast, this touring car?"
"The best money can buy."
"Now tell me what you know about the chauffeur who drives the
limousine?"
"He is absolutely to be trusted."
"You have had him long in your employ?"
The woman hesitated, looked aside, bit her lip.
"As a matter of fact, monsieur," she said hastily, trying to cover her
loss of countenance with rapid speech--"it is the boy who drove us
through the Cévennes. Monsieur Monk asked me to keep him pending his
return to France, You understand, he is not to be away long--Monsieur
Monk--only a few weeks; so it would have been extravagant to take Jules
back to America for that little time. You see?"
Lanyard had the grace to keep a straight face. He nodded gravely.
"You make it all perfectly clear, little sister. And the driver of the
touring car: are you sure of him?"
"I think so. But you do not tell me what you have in mind."
"Simply this: At the last moment you will decide to take Leon with you.
Give him no more time than he needs to pack a handbag. Trump up some
excuse and let him follow with Marthe..."
"No difficulty about that. He is an excellent driver, Leon; he served
me as chauffeur--and made a good one, too--for a year before I took him
into the house, at his request; he said he was tired of driving. But if
the man I had meant to use is indisposed--trust me to see that he is--I
can call on Leon to take care of Marthe and our luggage in the touring
car."
"Excellent. Now presuming Dupont to be well informed, we may safely
bank on his attempting nothing before nightfall. Road traps can be too
easily perceived at a distance by daylight. Toward evening then, we
will let the touring car catch up. You will express a desire to
continue in it, because--because of any excuse that comes into your
head. At all events, we will exchange cars with Marthe and Leon,
leaving the latter to bring on the limousine while Jules drives for us.
Whatever happens then, we may feel sure the touring car will get off
lightly; for whether they're involved with Dupont or not, Leon and
Marthe are small fry, not the fish he's angling for."
"But will not Leon and Marthe suspect and refuse to follow?"
"Perhaps they may suspect, but they will follow out of curiosity, to
see how we fare, if for nothing else. You may lose a limousine, but you
can afford to risk that as long as you are not in it--eh, little
long-lost sister?"
"My dear brother!" Liane cried, deeply moved. She leaned forward and
caressed Lanyard's hand with sisterly warmth, in her admiration and
gratification loosing upon him the full candle-power of the violet eyes
in their most disastrous smile. "What a head to have in the family!"
"Take care!" Lanyard admonished. "I admit it's not half bad at times,
but if this battered old headpiece of mine is to be of any further
service to us, Liane, you must be careful not to turn it!"
XIX
SIX BOTTLES OF CHAMPAGNE
Once decided upon a course of action, Liane Delorme demonstrated that
she could move with energy and decision uncommon in her kind. Under her
masterly supervision, preparations accomplished themselves, as it were,
by magic.
It was, for example, nearer three than four o'clock when the expedition
for Cherbourg left the door of her town-house and Paris by way of the
Porte de Neuilly; the limousine leading with that polished pattern of a
chauffeur, Jules, at its wheel, as spick and span, firm of jaw and
imperturbable of eye as when Lanyard had first noticed him in Nant; the
touring car trailing, with the footman Leon as driver, and not at all
happy to find himself drafted in that capacity, if one might judge by a
sullen sort of uneasiness in his look.
Nothing was to be expected in the streets or suburbs, neither speed nor
any indication of the intentions (if any) of Dupont. Lanyard spared
himself the thankless trouble of watching to see if they were
followed--having little doubt they were--and took his ease by the side
of Liane Delorme.
Chatting of old times, or sitting in grateful silence when Liane
relapsed into abstraction--something which she did with a frequency
which testified to the heavy pressure of her thoughts--he kept an
appreciative eye on Jules, conceding at length that Liane's adjective,
superb, had been fitly applied to his driving. So long as he remained
at the wheel, they were not only in safe hands but might be sure of
losing nothing on the road.
It was in St. Germain-en-Laye that Lanyard first noticed the grey
touring car. But for mental selection of St. Germain as the likeliest
spot for Dupont to lay in waiting, and thanks also to an error of
judgment on the part of that one, he must have missed it; for there was
nothing strikingly sinister in the aspect of that long-bodied grey car
with the capacious hood betokening a motor of great power. But it stood
incongruously round the corner, in a mean side street, as if anxious to
escape observation; its juxtaposition to the door of a wine shop of the
lowest class was noticeable in a car of such high caste; and, what was
finally damning, the rat-faced man of Lyons was lounging in the door of
the wine shop, sucking at a cigarette and watching the traffic with an
all too listless eye shaded by the visor of a shabby cap.
Lanyard said nothing at the time, but later, when a long stretch of
straight road gave him the chance, verified his suspicions by looking
back to see the grey car lurking not less than a mile and a half
astern; the Delorme touring car driven by Leon keeping a quarter of a
mile in the rear of the limousine.
These relative positions remained approximately unchanged during most
of the light hours of that long evening, despite the terrific pace
which Jules set in the open country. Lanyard, keeping an eye on the
indicator, saw its hand register the equivalent of sixty English miles
an hour more frequently than not. It seldom dropped below fifty except
when passing through towns or villages. And more often than he liked
Lanyard watched it creep up to and past the mark seventy.
With such driving he was quite willing to believe that they would see
Cherbourg or Heaven by midnight if not before; always, of course,
providing...
For the first three hours Leon stood the pace well. Then nerves or
physical endurance began to fail, he dropped back, and the Delorme
touring car was thereafter seldom visible.
No more, for that matter, was the grey shadow. Lanyard's forecast
seemed to be borne out by its conduct: Dupont was biding his time and
would undoubtedly attempt nothing before nightfall. In the meantime he
was making no effort to do more than keep step with the limousine, but
at a decent distance. Only occasionally when, for this reason or that,
Jules was obliged to run at reduced speed for several minutes on end,
the grey car would draw into sight, always, however, about a mile
behind the Delorme touring car.
At about seven they dined on the wing, from the hamper which, with
Liane's jewel case in its leather disguise of a simple travelling bag,
constituted all the limousine's load of luggage. Lanyard passed
sandwiches through the front window to Jules, who munched them while
driving like a speed maniac, and with the same appalling nonchalance
washed them down with a tumbler of champagne. Then he discovered some
manner of sorcerous power over matches in the wind, lighted a
cigarette, and signalised his sense of refreshment by smoothly edging
the indicator needle up toward the eighty notch, where he held it
stationary until Lanyard and Liane with one accord begged him to
consider their appetites.
At eight o'clock they were passing through Lisieux, one hundred and
eighteen miles from Paris.
Lanyard made mental calculations.
"The light will hold till after nine," he informed Liane. "By that time
we shall have left Caen behind."
"I understand," she said coolly; "it will be, then, after Caen."
"Presumably."
"Another hour of peace of mind!" She yawned delicately. "I think--I am
bored by this speed--I think I shall have a nap."
Composedly she arranged pillows, put her pretty feet upon the jewel
case and, turning her face from Lanyard, dozed.
"I think," he reflected, "that the world is more rich in remarkable
women than in remarkable men!"
A luminous lilac twilight vied with the street lamps of Caen when the
limousine rolled through the city at moderate speed. Lanyard utilized
this occasion to confer with Jules through the window.
"Beyond the town," he said, "you will stop just round the first
suitable turning, so that we can't be seen before the corner is turned.
Draw off to the side of the road and--I think it would be advisable to
have a little engine trouble."
"Very good, sir," said Jules without looking round. Then he added in a
voice of complete respect: "Pardon, sir, but--madame's orders?"
"If they are not"--Lanyard was nettled--"she will countermand them."
"Quite so, sir. And--if you don't mind my asking--what's the idea?"
"I presume you set some value on your skin?"
"Plumb crazy about it."
"Mademoiselle Delorme and I are afflicted with the same idiosyncrasy.
We want to save our lives, and we don't mind saving yours at the same
time."
"That's more than fair with me. But is that all I'm to know?"
"If the information is any comfort to you: in a grey car which has been
following us ever since we left St. Germain, is the man who--I
believe--murdered Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes on the Lyons rapide, and
who--I know--tried last night to murder Mademoiselle Delorme."
"And I suppose that, in his big-hearted, wholesaler's way, he wouldn't
mind making a bag of the lot of us tonight."
"I'm afraid you have reason..."
"If you're planning to put a crimp in his ambitions, sir, I've got a
pistol I know how to use."
"Better have it handy, though I don't think we'll need it yet. Our
present plan is merely to change cars with Leon and Marthe; the grey
car will pass and go on ahead before we make the shift; then you,
mademoiselle and I follow in the touring car, the others in the
limousine. If there's a trap, as we have every reason to anticipate
there will, the touring car will get through--or we'll hope so."
"Ah-h!" Jules used the tone of one who perceives enlightenment as a
blinding flash. "Marthe and Leon are in on the dirty work too, eh?"
"What makes you think that?"
"Putting two and two together--what you've just told me with what I've
been noticing and wondering about."
"Then you think those two--"
"Marthe and Leon," Jules pronounced with deliberation, "are two very
bad eggs, if you ask me. I shan't shed a solitary tear if something sad
happens to them in this 'bus to-night."
There was no time then to delve into his reasons for this statement of
feeling. The outskirts of Caen were dropping behind. Providentially,
the first bend in the road to Bayeux afforded good cover on the side
toward the town. Jules shut off the power as he made the turn, and
braked to a dead stop in lee of a row of outhouses. Lanyard was on the
ground as soon as the wheels ceased to turn, Jules almost as quickly.
"Now for your engine trouble," Lanyard instructed. "Nothing serious,
you understand--simply an adjustment to excuse a few minutes' delay and
lend colour to our impatience."
"Got you the first time," Jules replied, unlatching and raising one
wing of the hood.
Lanyard moved toward the middle of the road and flagged the Delorme
touring car as it rounded the turn, a few seconds later, at such speed
that Leon was put to it to stop the car fifty yards beyond the
limousine. The man jumped down and, followed by the maid, ran back, but
before he reached the limousine was obliged to jump aside to escape the
grey car which, tooled by a crack racing hand, took the corner on two
wheels, then straightened out and tore past in a smother of dust, with
its muffler cut out and the exhaust bellowing like a machine-gun.
Lanyard counted four figures, two on the front seat, two in the
tonneau. More than this, the headlong speed and the failing light
rendered it impossible to see--though had the one been less and the
other stronger, he could have gained little more information from
inspection of those four shapes shrouded in dust coats and masked with
goggles.
Watching its rear light dwindle, he fancied that the grey shadow was
slowing down; but one could not be sure about that.
"There is something wrong, monsieur?"
The man Leon was at his elbow. Lanyard replied with the curt nod of a
disgruntled motorist.
"Something--Jules can tell you," he said shortly.
"Meanwhile, Mademoiselle Delorme and I have decided not to wait. We've
got no time to spare. We will take your car and go on."
"But, monsieur, I--" Leon began to expostulate.
The icy accents of Liane Delorme cut it: "Well, Leon: what is your
objection?"
"Objection, madame?" the fellow faltered. "Pardon--but it is not for
me to object. I--I was merely startled."
"Then get over that at once," he was advised; "and bring my
jewelcase--Marthe will point it out to you--to the touring-car."
"Yes, madame, immediately."
"Also the lunch-hamper, if you please."
"Assuredly, monsieur."
Leon departed hastily for the limousine, where Marthe joined him, while
Lanyard and Liane Delorme proceeded to the touring car.
"But what on earth do you want with that hamper, monsieur?"
"Hush, little sister, not so loud! Brother thinks he has another idea."
"Then Heaven forbid that I should interfere!"
Staggering under its weight, Leon shouldered the jewelcase and carried
it to the touring car, where Liane superintended its disposal in the
luggage-jammed tonneau. A second trip, less laborious, brought them the
hamper. Liane uttered perfunctory thanks and called to Jules, who was
still tinkering at the limousine engine with the aid of an electric
torch.
"Come, Jules! Leave Leon to attend to what is required there."
"Very good, madame."
Jules strolled over to the touring car and settled down at the wheel.
Liane Delorme had the seat beside him.
Lanyard had established himself in a debatable space in the tonneau to
which his right was disputed by bags and boxes of every shape, size and
description.
"How long, Jules, will Leon need--?"
"Five minutes, madame, if he takes his time about it."
"Then let us hasten."
They drew away from the limousine so quickly that in thirty seconds its
headlights were all that marked its stand.
Lanyard studied the phosphorescent dial of his wristwatch. From first
to last the transaction had consumed little more than three minutes.
Liane slewed round to talk over the back of the seat.
"What time is it, monsieur?"
"Ten after nine. In an hour precisely the moon will rise."
"It will be in this hour of darkness, then..."
A bend in the road blotted out the stationary lights of the limousine.
There was no tail-light visible on the road before them. Lanyard
touched Jules on the shoulder.
"Switch off your lights," he said--"all of them. Then find a place
where we can turn off and wait till Leon and Marthe pass us."
In sudden blindness the car moved on slowly, groping its way for a few
hundred yards. Then Jules picked out the mouth of a narrow lane,
overshadowed by dense foliage, ran past, stopped, and backed into it.
In four minutes by Lanyard's watch the pulse of the limousine began to
beat upon the stillness of that sleepy countryside. A blue-white glare
like naked and hungry steel leapt quivering past the bend, swept in a
wide arc as the lamps themselves became visible, and lay horizontal
with the road as the car bored past.
"Evidently Leon feels quite lost without us," Lanyard commented.
"Shoot, Jules--follow his rear lamp, and _don't_ cut out your muffler.
Can you manage without headlights for a while?"
"I drove an ambulance for four years, sir."
The car swung out into the main highway. Far ahead the red sardonic eye
in the rear of the limousine leered as if mocking their hopes of
keeping it in sight. Jules, however, proved unresentful; and he was
marvellously competent.
"To anybody who's ever piloted a load of casualties through eighteen
inches of mud, dodging shell holes and shells on their way to make new
holes, in a black rainstorm at midnight--this sort of thing," Jules
announced--"a hard, smooth road under a clear sky--is simple pie."
So it may have seemed to him. But to Lanyard and Liane Delorme, hurled
along a road they could not see at anywhere from forty to sixty miles
an hour, with no manner of guidance other than an elusive tail-lamp
which was forever whisking round corners and remaining invisible till
Jules found his way round in turn, by instinct or second sight or
intuition--whatever it was, it proved unfailing--it was a nervous
time.
And there was half an hour of it...
They were swooping down a long grade with a sharp turn at the bottom,
as they knew from the fact that the red eye had just winked out,
somewhere on ahead, there sounded a grinding crash, the noise of a
stout fabric rent and crushed with the clash and clatter of shivered
glass.
"Easy," Lanyard cautioned--"and ready with the lights!"
Both warnings were superfluous. Jules had already disengaged the gears.
Gravity carried the car round the curve, slowly, smoothly, silently;
under constraint of its brakes it slid to a pause on a steep though
brief descent, and hung there like an animal poised to spring, purring
softly.
Below, at the foot of the hill, the headlights of another car, standing
at some distance and to the right of the road, furnished lurid
illumination to the theatre of disaster.
Something, its nature just then mysterious, had apparently caused Leon
to lose control of the heavy car, so that it had skidded into a ditch
and capsized. Four men, crude shapes of nightmare in enveloping
dust-coats and disfiguring goggles, were swarming round the wreck. Two
were helping the driver out, two others having their gallantry in
performing like service for the maid rewarded by a torrent of
vituperative denunciation, half hysterical and wholly infuriated.
By the freedom of her gestures, which was rivalled only by that of her
language, the dishevelled, storming figure of Marthe was manifestly
uninjured. And in another moment it was seen, as Leon found his feet
and limped toward the others, that he had suffered only slight damage
at the worst.
Lanyard drew attention to a dark serpentine line that lay like a dead
snake upon the lighted surface of the road. Jules grunted in token of
comprehension. Liane Delorme breathlessly demanded: "What is it?"
"An old trick," Lanyard explained: "A wire cable stretched between
trees diagonally across the road, about as high as the middle of the
windshield. The impetus of the limousine broke it, but not before it
had slewed the car off toward the ditch, wrenching the wheel out of the
driver's hands."
He fondled the pistol which Jules had handed him, slipped the safety
catch, and said: "Now before they wake up, Jules--give her all she's
got!"
Jules released the brakes and, as the car gathered way, noiselessly
slipped the gear shift into the fourth speed and bore heavily on the
accelerator. They were making forty miles an hour when they struck the
level and thundered past the group.
A glimpse of startled faces, the scream of a man who had strayed
incautiously into the roadway and stopped there, apparently petrified
by the peril that bore down upon him without lights or any other
warning, until one of the forward fenders struck and hurled him aside
like a straw--and only the night of the open road lay before them.
Jules touched the headlight switch and opened the exhaust. Above the
roaring of the latter Lanyard fancied he could hear a faint rattling
sound. He looked back and smiled grimly. Sharp, short flames of orange
and scarlet were stabbing the darkness. Somebody had opened fire with
an automatic pistol.... Sheer waste of ammunition!
The pace waxed terrific on a road, like so many roads of France,
apparently interminable and straight. On either hand endless ranks of
poplars rattled like loose palings of some tremendous picket fence. And
yet, long before the road turned, Lanyard, staring astern as he knelt
on the rear seat with arms crossed on the folded top, saw the two white
eyes of the grey car swing into view and start in pursuit. Quick work,
he called it.
He crawled forward and communicated his news, shouting to make himself
heard.
"Don't ease up unless you have to," he counselled; "don't think we dare
give them an inch."